Chicken Chasing (Chickens)

Member Name: milmol

Product:	Chickens
Date:	12/08/02 (955 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Knowing your eggs came from non caged hens.

Disadvantages: Coop cleaning.....

My husband’s new name for me is Tweedy, as in Mrs. from the film ‘Chicken Run’. I’m really not as cruel as her but I called 3 of our chickens Kentucky, Kiev and Nugget, just to keep them on their toes, (do chickens have toes?), anyway, a bit of background first.

At the bottom of my garden is a paddock, approx 2 acres with stables, barn and tack room. My daughter had her ponies there until she went to college last September, and now the paddock is rented out. I missed the routine, the getting up each morning and ‘sorting out’ animals. The dog and cat don’t take much time to see to in the morning and I suppose I was feeling like an ‘empty nest’ mother. So that’s why I had a brilliant idea. I would keep chickens. Feeling like Felicity Kendal from the good life, I imagined being self sufficient (as far as eggs go anyway) and once the idea was in my head, off I went.

First I surfed the net, gathering info on nesting boxes, chicken coops, feed etc, and then the difficult bit, to persuade hubby. Fortunately he had a week off work and I managed to persuade him how wonderful it would be to spend it together in the fresh air on a joint project. An old garden shed was placed on bricks to prevent rats and mice from entering and a good size piece of land was fenced of to keep the chickens in and the dog out. Hubby was brilliant at making 4 nesting boxes, which were lovingly filed with straw, nicely arranged to await a chicken’s bottom.

Perches were placed nice and high as the experts recommend with a board underneath to convieniantly catch droppings and keep the floor clean. We managed to beg a metal chicken feeder from a neighbour, this is a large item like an upside down dummy that hangs in the middle of the shed and holds feed. I bought some corn and layers pellets (£4 for a big bag) which I placed in the ponies old feed bins with lockable lids as our local mice population seems fat e
nough. Next job....find the chickens.

A friend gave me a phone number for a local supplier and recommended hybrids as good layers. At £3.00 each they seemed good value and the deal was agreed at 6 chickens. It sounds silly now, but I was excited about the prospect of their arrival and fondly surveyed the coop and surrounding land, imagining them happily scratching and laying away. I picked the names for 3 of them as I stated, and my daughter, a vegetarian who didn’t quiet see the funny side of my names called the other 3 Mabel, Betty and Beryl. And so they came home.

I was told to keep them indoors for 2-3 weeks before I let them out, apparently this stops them for dong a ‘chicken run’ and trying to make a bid for freedom but as this seemed a bit cruel, I persuaded hubby to make them a door screen so they could at least have the door to the shed/coop open and survey their surroundings. Their imprisonment did present some problems as trying to enter the coop (ok it was a shed but now it’s a coop) without them escaping was tricky but I soon learned a handful of corn to the back of the coop fooled them into running the wrong way. Eventually the big day arrived and the chickens earned their parole, the door opened, and six fat ladies made a bid for freedom. We watched them fondly on and off throughout the day, and about 8pm I decided the girls had had enough for one day and it was bedtime. Thinking it would be easy I entered their territory, calling their names and generally trying to entice them into the coop. No such luck.

Plan B, throw some feed into the coop and chickens will follow, wrong, some will but some will also run back out.

Plan C, persuade hubby to do a ‘Rocky rerun’ and catch chickens, fall about hysterically as he chases them unsuccessfully and tells me this was my stupid idea anyway.

Plan D, give up and pray no foxes/dogs decide to eat my new friends.

Now any chi
cken owner will tell you, just as I can now, that chickens do not need to be put to bed, as soon as darkness falls they take their little selves back home to their perches and will look at you with beady eyes as you shut the door to the coop cursing at the little darlings.

Other things to beware

~ Do not enter the chickens territory wearing any footwear with laces, the chickens will immediately mistake them for worms and your feet will be pecked to death.

~ Do not try to remove eggs from under a chicken’s bottom unless you no longer value your hands without peck marks. It’s much wiser to wait until the chicken gets fed up and leaves the egg alone.

~ Do not panic and dash to the coop because you see your cat entering the premises, it too enjoys curling up in nesting boxes and neither he nor the chickens find this unusual.

~ Do not be surprised when you come home and find one of your chickens has managed to enter the garden and is scratching up your flower beds. Be even less surprised that your Golden Retriever is layed watching it and is too idle/stupid to chase it back home.

Finally, do not be surprised if you get attached to the chickens, or my girls as they are now known, after all fresh eggs every day make all the coop cleaning worthwhile.

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